An attack on the headquarters of the Pakistan Army in the city of Rawalpindi has highlighted the country's vulnerability to a backlash from Islamist militants in the Pakistani Taliban as it prepares an offensive against their stronghold in South Waziristan. It follows a suicide bombing in Peshawar which prompted Interior Minister Rehman Malik to say that "all roads are leading to South Waziristan."

But what is perhaps more troubling about the attack is not so much the backlash from the Pakistani Taliban (the Tehrik-e-Taliban, or TTP)  holed up in the Waziristan tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, but rather suggestions of growing co-operation between al Qaeda-linked groups there and those based in Punjab, the heartland of Pakistan.

Analysts have long argued that the biggest danger to Pakistan would come not from the tribal areas, but from the creation of a stregthening coalition of militant groups which brought together the Pakistani Taliban, al Qaeda, and militant groups based in Punjab - which include sectarian groups and those originally set up to fight India in Kashmir.

According to the New York Times, the militants behind the attack were a mixed group from across Pakistan. It quoted an unnamed military official as saying that some came from the tribal areas, some from Punjab and some from Pakistani Kashmir.

Pakistan's GEO TV said it had received a call from the Tehrik-e-Taliban (Ajmad Farooqi) group claiming responsibility for the attack. The caller demanded, among other things, that former president Pervez Musharraf be held accountable.

Claims of responsibility are just that - a claim that remains to be verified. But I looked up Musharraf's autobiography "In the Line of Fire" to see what he had to say about Ajmad Farooqi. According to Musharraf, Farooqi was a senior al Qaeda operative who had been involved in the killing of U.S. journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002, and subsequently was involved in two attempts to assassinate him.  Farooqi was killed in a shoot-out with Pakistani security forces in the town of Nawabshah in Sind province in 2004, after a manhunt held under the supervision of current Pakistan Army head General Pervez Ashfaq Kayani.

Here is what Musharraf had to say about Farooqi's links to Punjab: In the manhunt, Pakistan started by tracking his phone calls. "In September 2004 we found that he was talking to two people in particular, in the Punjabi dialect of Faisalbad, the third largest of our cities in central Punjab."

As discussed earlier on this blog, including here and here, the danger from Islamist militants in Punjab tends to be overlooked in the focus on tackling the Pakistani Taliban in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan.  But if it turns out that those behind the attack on the Pakistan Army headquarters were not only from the remote areas bordering Afghanistan but also from the heartland of the country, then the risk to Pakistan's stability has just got a lot bigger.

(Photos: Soldiers take position in Rawalpindi; and Pakistan army chief, General Kayani)

Afghanistan has wasted little time in accusing Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) spy agency of being behind a bomb attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul on Thursday.

Asked by PBS news channel whether Kabul blamed Pakistan for the bombing, Afghan ambassador to the United States Said Jawad said: "Yes, we do. We are pointing the finger at the Pakistan intelligence agency, based on the evidence on the ground and similar attacks taking place in Afghanistan."

But what has been more striking is how careful India has been not to assign blame too quickly.  Indian Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao, the country's top diplomat, visited Kabul on Friday but said it was too early to say who was responsible for the bombing.

"I think the investigation should be completed," she said when asked if India thought Pakistan was behind the attack. "Whoever is responsible for this attack is against peace, is against democracy, is against people of Afghanistan and against the people of India."

India has in the past accused the ISI of being behind attacks on Indian interests in Afghanistan. An attack on the same Kabul embassy last year killed 58 people. And as discussed regularly on this blog, rivalry between Indian and Pakistan over Afghanistan complicates U.S. efforts to stabilise the country no matter how many extra troops it sends.

For a sense of deja vu, see this post from last August on India-Pakistan rivalry in Afghanistan, this post on the United States often conflicted approach in its dealings with the ISI, and this post from December asking whether it still made sense for President Barack Obama to send more troops to Afghanistan after last year's attack on Mumbai torpedoed hopes of a regional settlement.

So what is to be expected as a result of this latest bombing on the Indian embassy in Kabul?  Will it automatically lead to a fresh increase in tensions between India and Pakistan, or at the very least stall tentative attempts to repair relations soured by the Mumbai attack?

The answer to that is not as obvious as it might seem.

Pakistan's civilian government, which says its wants to hold peace talks with India, is already embroiled in an awkward stand-off with the Pakistan Army over provisions in the U.S. Kerry-Lugar aid bill which appear to curb the power of the military. So India might judge that now is not the right moment to raise the temperature.

Complicating the picture further is increasing violence within Pakistan itself - as highlighted by Saturday's attack by suspected Taliban militants on the Pakistan Army's headquarters in Rawalpindi, a day after 49 people were killed by a suicide car-bomber in the city of Peshawar. Do also read this chilling BBC account about the growth of militancy in south Punjab, in the heartland of Pakistan.

Add to that uncertainty about Obama's yet-to-be-completed review of strategy in Afghanistan, along with reports that the insurgency there is both growing and becoming increasingly independent of leaders in Pakistan, and you get one of the more fluid and volatile mixes in the history of relations between India and Pakistan.

All that makes it impossible to predict with any certainty the impact of the Kabul embassy bombing on relations between the two countries. One to watch closely in the days and weeks ahead.

(Photos: Site of bomb blast in Kabul; Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao; soldiers take position in Rawalpindi)

U.S. General Stanley McChrystal in his assessment of the war in Afghanistan last month only briefly touched upon the growing role of India, but his words were blunt and unsettling for India. In the light of Thursday's attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul that left 17 people dead, McChrsytal's comments may yet turn out to be prescient.

“Indian political and economic influence is increasing in Afghanistan, including significant development efforts and financial investment. In addition, the current Afghan government is perceived by Islamabad to be pro-Indian. While Indian activities largely benefit the Afghan people, increasing Indian influence in Afghanistan is likely to exacerbate regional tensions and encourage Pakistani countermeasures in Afghanistan or India," he said, according to the leaked version of his report.

New Delhi has held its counsel so far on who it thought was responsible for the latest attack, but if it eventually points the finger at elements in Pakistan - blamed for the 2008 attack by both New Delhi and United States - it will reinforce the view that Afghanistan is the foes' current  battle ground, perhaps more than Kashmir, exhausted by 20 years of a proxy war. 

Last week the Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi told the Los Angeles Times that Islamabad had real concerns about Indian involvement in Afghanistan.

"They have to justify their interest. They do not share a border with Afghanistan, whereas we do. So the level of engagement has to be commensurate with that. If there is no massive [Indian] reconstruction [in Afghanistan], if there are not long queues in Delhi waiting for visas to travel to Kabul, why do you have such a large presence in Afghanistan? "

Indian diplomacy has certainly been on an overdrive in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban. Besides the embassy in Kabul, there are consulates in Herat, Mazhar-e-Sharif, Kandahar and Jalalabad  representing all four parts of the country, stirring fears in Pakistan of a strategic encirclement.

And while many Afghans hold Pakistan responsible for the brutal Taliban rule before 2001, New Delhi has positioned itself as the "soft power" combining the appeal of Bollywood and soap operas for the Afghans with aid projects that that seem to be delivering.  In May, an India-made power transmission line to Kabul and a sub-station were opened, bringing 24-hour electricity to the capital for the first time in 17 years.

In January, India completed building the 218km Zaranj-Delaram highway in south-west Afghanistan near the Iranian border.  Then, it is building a new parliament building in Kabul as also a dam in Herat

India says a stable Afghanistan is in its interest and it is not about to back down from it. Asked about McChyrstal's remarks, Indian ambassador Jayant Prasad told the Business Standard  :"How can one agree that Indian assistance is creating a problem for Pakistan? This is not the objective of Indian assistance to Afghanistan. India’s objective is to stabilize Afghanistan. Getting the Afghans to stand on their own feet is good for the Afghan people, good for India and good for the world, including all the regional countries."

As violence worsens in Afghanistan, and pressure builds up at home, is America going to intervene then and call a halt to the India-Pakistan battle for influence ?

[Photographs of the Kabul bombing and the aftermath]

U.S. defence officials, in a ringing vote of confidence, said over the weekend that Pakistan had the forces and equipment to launch a long-awaited ground offensive in South Waziristan. It could mount this assault without seeking more reinforcements, a U.S. official said, according to this Reuters report. Yet Pakistan had cited in recent months shortages of helicopters, armoured vehicles and precision weapons in putting off a Waziristan assault.

So what has changed? Has the United States,  desperate to turn around a faltering war in Afghanistan, got ahead of itself in nudging Pakistan toward "the mother-of-all battles"? 

Some people are asking if the Pakistan Army is really ready to start what must be its bigest test yet since the militants turned on the Pakistani state. If the idea is to go in and linflict casualties on the Taliban in the hope of killing senior leaders, then it will be another punitive strike for which the force levels may well be adequate.

But if the Pakistan Army plans to go into the Mehsud strongholds and occupy the region then the numbers are a bit worrying, says Bill Roggio at The Long War Journal.  A Pakistan Army spokesman has said that  two divisions, or up to 28,000 soldiers, are in place to take on an estimated 10,000 hard-core Taliban. 

But Roggio says Waliur Rehman Mehsud, who heads the Mehsud Taliban forces in Waziristan, (Hakimullah Mehsud who surfaced at the weekend is the overall head of the Pakistani Taliban) is estimated to command anything between 10,000 to 30,000 forces.  If the army were to wage a full-scale counter-insurgency they and the Frontier Corps "would need to throw multiple divisions against a Taliban force of this size," he argues. And then there is the Haqqani network, as well as a sizeable contingent of Uzbek and other non-Pakistani fighters in the area. They may well join the fight, according to the Dawn newspaper.

Pakistani expert Imtiaz Gul, who heads the  Independent Centre for Research and Security Studies in Islamabad, calls Waziristan a "blackhole" for security and intelligence forces. At least 800 pro-government tribal elders and intelligence officials have lost their lives to Taliban and al Qaeda assassins in Waziristan and adjacent tribal areas, most of them in the last four years, eroding Pakistani intelligence from the region and in turn forcing a greater reliance on U.S. drone surveillance and strikes, he says in a piece for the AFPAK channel for Foreign Policy.

Gul reckons one of the prime objectives of the impending military assault would be to take out the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan entrenched there and whose powerful leader Tahir Yuldashev is believed to have been killed in a U.S. drone strike in August.

Some others are saying there is actually no public estimate of the total number of Waziri fighters, and that the Pakistan Army might end up in a 1:1 ratio with the militants, which is far too low to sustain a counter-insurgency campaign, let alone win it. You can't help recalling again the oft-quoted words of Lord Curzon, the turn-of-the-century British Viceroy of India, who said : "No patchwork scheme will settle the Waziristan problem. Not until the military steamroller has passed over the country from end to end, will there be peace. But I do not want to be the person to start that machine."

And even if Pakistan were willing to run the steamroller it may just not be avaialble to it, not yet at least.

Sameer Lalwani in a study for the New America Foundation says that the Pakistan Army is already overstretched with the Swat operation and lacks the capacity to  expand the fight. The study provides a fairly detailed assessment of Pakistani capabilities for a counter-insurgency campaign focussing on  1) the nature of the insurgency, including its strength, capabilities, tactics, and strategic objectives; 2) the terrain challenges posed by the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), and 3) current and potential Pakistani potential military capabilites.  Here is the PDF of the full report.

In short, Lalwani argues that 370,000 and 430,000 more troops would be needed in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas  and the North West Frontier Province region to meet the minimum force-to-population ratios prescribed by standard counter-insurgency (COIN) doctrine, much higher than current Pakistani deployments of 150,000, and even this is no assurance of success given adverse conditions.

It is too big for the army alone, and  would need the calling up of reserves and also greater reliance on the poorly-equipped Frontier Corps. And the Pakistan Army would resist redeployment of more forces from the Indian border because for it, the Indians remain an enduring threat.

And as Roggio asks is the state ready for the blow back from a full-scale assault? The militants have repeatedly attacked cities each time they have come under pressure. On Monday, a suicide bomber breached the tightly guarded office of the United Nations World Food Programme in a residential part of Islamabad, killing five people.

[Photographs of Hakimullah Mehsud and paramilitary soldiers]

According to Dawn newspaper, the Pakistan Army is poised to launch a major military operation in South Waziristan, stronghold of the Pakistani Taliban.

It quotes senior military and security officials as saying that the army would launch what it called "the mother of all battles" in the coming days.

"If we don’t take the battle to them, they will bring the battle to us," it quotes a senior military official as saying of the militants. "The epicentre of the behemoth called the Taliban lies in South Waziristan, and this is where we will be fighting the toughest of all battles."

"For three months, the military has been drawing up plans, holding in-depth deliberations and carrying out studies on past expeditions to make what seems to be the last grand stand against Pakistani Taliban in the Mehsud heartland a success," it says.

"We are ready. The environment is ready," it quotes the senior officer as saying. "It will not be a walkover. This is going to be casualty-intensive hard fighting. The nation will have to bear the pain," said another officer.

The Pakistan Army is not saying anything in public, and information about its operations in Waziristan is hard to come by since the area is so remote and inaccessible.

But any ground offensive into South Waziristan would be a major escalation in the Pakistan Army's battle against the Pakistani Taliban, dwarfing its operation earlier this year to clear militants out of the Swat valley northwest of Islamabad.

The army has been reluctant to send ground troops into South Waziristan, instead aiming to seal off the area and rely on airstrikes to target militants. But talk of a possible ground offensive has risen after two bomb attacks last weekend raised fears the Pakistani Taliban were recovering from the death of their leader, Baitullah Mehsud, in a U.S. missile strike in August.

Interior Minister Rehman Malik told me earlier this week that Pakistan was considering whether it needed to launch a full-scale military operation against the Pakistani Taliban, who he described as "the front face of al Qaeda".

And according to Dawn, "Thousands of army soldiers - two divisions - are now sitting on the fringes of the Mehsud mainland waiting for orders from the high command to move in."

South Waziristan is believed to be heavily defended; it is larger than Swat and more inaccessible. Its people have always been hostile to outsiders, unlike Swat which was once a tourist paradise before it was overrun by Taliban militants. So any ground offensive would likely cause heavy casualties.

The general view has also been that the army has been running out of time to launch a ground offensive before the winter snows make operations extremely hard and would defer any big moves until the spring. That could still be the case, if it judges that a combination of air attacks and missile strikes by U.S. drones - the latest reported casualty from these was Uzbek militant leader Tahir Yuldashev - is enough to keep the militants at bay and stop them from bombing Pakistani cities.

But Malik said Pakistan could even launch an operation in winter if needs be. "Even in the winter, even before starting winter ... if we feel appropriate that this operation is unavoidable, yes, we will consider that," he said.

The Pakistan Army has years of experience of fighting in winter conditions - along with the Indian Army it became a world expert in high-altitude warfare in the conflict over the Siachen region which erupted in 1984, and it also has troops posted in the mountains along the Line of Control dividing Kashmir - although there has been a ceasefire there since 2003.

So it is not out of the question for the Pakistan Army to launch an offensive that drags into the winter. According to the Dawn report, temperatures in Waziristan can drop to 20 degrees below freezing, with snow setting in towards the end of November -- fairly brutal conditions for an offensive, but less hostile in terms of weather than it has had to deal with in Siachen over the years.  And Dawn quotes military strategists as saying the weather problem would hit the militants more than the troops, although the former would have the advantage of knowing their terrain.

In its battle against Islamist militants, Pakistan has concentrated on tackling the Pakistani Taliban, which threaten the country directly. That has annoyed the United States, which wants Pakistan to move as well against militants fighting western troops in Afghanistan, including the Afghan Taliban which it says are based in Quetta, in Baluchistan province. India is pressing for action against militant groups based in Pakistan's Punjab province, including the Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group it blames for last year's attack on Mumbai.

But for now, attention within Pakistan seems to be turning to Waziristan for what could turn out to be the toughest military campaign in the whole of the Afghanistan and Pakistan theatre.

(File photos:Pakistani soldier in Swat; Pakistan army chief General Ashfaq Kayani with U.S. General David Petraeus; Taliban fighters; author in Siachen)

A single paragraph in General Stanley McChrystal's leaked assessment of the war in Afghanistan has generated much interest, particularly in Pakistan.

"Indian political and economic influence is increasing in Afghanistan, including significant development efforts and financial investment," it says. "In addition the current Afghan government is perceived by Islamabad to be pro-Indian. While Indian activities largely benefit the Afghan people, increasing Indian influence in Afghanistan is likely to exacerbate regional tensions and encourage Pakistani counter-measures in Afghanistan or India."

He did not say anything that anybody did not already know. Pakistan has long been wary of India's growing influence in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban in 2001 and is seen as reluctant to turn against the Afghan Taliban and other insurgent groups as long as it believes it might need them to counter India. The fact that he said it all suggested a renewed focus on the relationship between India and Pakistan, whose confrontation to the east spilled long ago into rivalry over Afghanistan to the west.

Pakistan's Daily Times said in an editorial the rivalry between India and Pakistan in Afghanistan highlighted the need for peace talks between the two nuclear-armed neighbours, which have fought three full-scale wars since independence in 1947, two of them over Kashmir.

"One must be clear in one’s mind that in many ways the mess in Afghanistan is actually a spillover of the Indo-Pak conflict in the region of South Asia," it said. "Pakistan’s policy of “strategic depth”, which reached a climax with the hijacking of an Indian airliner to Kandahar in 1999, was in reaction to the unresolved dispute over Kashmir which created the “threat of India” that Pakistan felt “from the east”. Even today, as Pakistan struggles against the Taliban, 80 percent of its army is stationed on the Indian border.

Dawn newspaper said McChrystal's words on India were "perhaps as significant as any other in the report".  The Americans appeared to have finally understood, it said, that the war in Afghanistan could not be won without help from Pakistan. "But that means gaining Pakistan’s full cooperation, which in turn means alleviating the national security establishment’s concerns vis-à-vis India."

However, as discussed in this analysis, India is in little mood to move rapidly towards peace talks with Pakistan until it takes greater action against militants it blames for last year's attack on Mumbai, although the two countries have been taking incremental steps towards repairing relations. Many argue that the powerful Pakistan Army would be unlikely to turn against militant groups it once cultivated to fight India in Kashmir, without a comprehensive peace settlement with India. (For an understanding of how complicated all this is, read this book reviewby Pakistani strategic analyst Ayesha Siddiqa.)

So, to win the war in Afghanistan, the United States needs help from Pakistan, which Pakistan in turn is reluctant to provide so long as it believes it is threatened by India to both the west and east.  From Washington's point of view, it needs to nudge Islamabad and New Delhi towards the negotiating table, by leaning on Pakistan to act against militant groups and putting pressure on India to resume peace talks. 

Here is another catch. Although the relationship between the United States and India blossomed under former President George W. Bush, there is far less warmth in New Delhi towards the Obama administration. The relationship started on the wrong foot with India concerned about increasing U.S. economic dependence on its rival China.

Now India and the United States are at loggerheads over President Barack Obama's nuclear non-proliferation drive.  India has never signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. That row, in turn, complicates efforts by Washington to persuade India to talk to Pakistan.

(Reuters file photos: Obama with Karzai and Biden; a British soldier in Afghanistan; hijacked Indian Airlines plane in Kandahar)

By Zeeshan Haider

Pakistan is battling Taliban militants, trying to patch up relations with old rival India and struggling to revive a limping economy but another issue has preoccupied the country over recent days: the sighting of the moon that markes the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.

A row erupted when the Eid al Fitr holiday that follows Ramadan was celebrated in several parts of North West Frontier Province (NWFP) on Sunday, a day ahead of the rest of the country. Many Pakistanis say that violated a spirit of harmony and unity that should mark one of the
most important events of the Islamic calender.

Some clerics in NWFP announced on Saturday evening that the crescent moon, which marks the end of a month in Islam's lunar calender, had been sighted, meaning Ramadan was over and Eid would be celebrated the next day. But a government-appointed body of clerics responsible for
moon-sighting rejected the announcement, citing reports from the Meteorological Department that said the moon could not be seen on Saturday.

Clerics in  NWFP, a religiously conservative region on the Afghan border dominated by ethnic Pashtuns, have called Eid early before but this time the politicians jumped into the fray. The Awami National Party (ANP), a secular party ruling NWFP which is also part of the federal coalition, backed the clerics from its province who called Eid early.

Analysts say the ANP's stand could be a aimed at winning the support of conservative Pashtuns.

Some ANP ministers exchanged barbs with Mufti Muneeb-ur-Rehman, the head of the federal government's moon-sighting committee, and called for his removal.

Minister for Railways and senior ANP leader Bashir Ahmed Bilour described Rehman as a "remnant" of Pervez Musharraf, the former military ruler who stepped down as president last year after ruling the country for nine years, and said he should be replaced by Mufti Shahbuddin Popalzai, a hardline cleric from NWFP who called Eid early.

Rehman responded by saying Bilour was trying to stoke religious tension by promoting the conservative Popalzai.

"By demanding that Popalzai be made chairman of the Reut-e-Hilal (moon-sighting) Committee, Bilour is paving the way for Talibanisation in other parts of the country," the News newspaper
quoted Rehman as saying.

Both Bilour and Rehman later toned down their rhetoric.

Bilour apologised for some of his remarks while Rehman said he would not oppose Popalzai's appointment as a member of the central moon-sighting committee.

But debate is still raging in the media, amid calls for the federal government to take steps to ensure unity on religious questions.

"I have a simple suggestion to permanently end the annual moon-sighting controversy: a compulsory course in astronomy for all members of the Reut-e-Hilal Committee as well as those clerics who think that the moon should appear in Pakistan on the same day as in Saudi Arabia,"
Shakir Laskhani said in a letter published in the News newspaper on Thursday.

The daily said in an editorial headlined "Moon madness" scientific methods should be employed when sighting the moon.

"The time has come to find rationality".

[Reuters pictures of Lahore's Badshahi mosque and sighting of the moon in Malaysia]

Early last year a group of Indian and Pakistan retired generals and strategic experts sat down for a war-gaming exercise in Washington. The question, predictably enough, was at what point during a conventional war, would the generals in Rawalpindi GDQ reach for the nuclear trigger.

In the event, the simulated war took on an unpredictable turn, which in some ways was more illuminating than the question of nuclear escalation, as columnist Ashok Malik writes in The Great Divide:India and Pakistan, a collection of essays by experts on both sides of the border.

The exercise begins with an Indian military strike on militant camps in Pakistani Kashmir, the most commonly envisaged scenario for the next India-Pakistan war.  But the Pakistan response defies conventional logic . They don't order a military push into Indian Punjab and Rajasthan, they don't even attack Bombay High, the most valuable Indian oil asset in the Arabian Sea, and well within striking distance of the Pakistani Air Force.

Instead PAF planes fly all way to Bangalore, deep in the Indian south, to attack the campus of Infosys, the much celebrated Indian IT company.

Strange choice of target ? By all military logic it would seem so. It's not like all of India would be crippled if  Infosys were attacked, they don;'t run Indian IT infrastructure. Even the company itself might not suffer lasting damage. Its data would probably be stored in locations elsehwere too, and it wouldn't take it long to rebuild the campus. Besides. the Pakistani planes would be almost certain to be shot down on their way back, if they managed to penetrate this far in on what seems like a suicide mission.

So why Bangalore, and Infosys? Malilk quotes a Pakistani participant as saying  they chose the target because it is an "iconic symbol" of India's IT prowess and economic surge.  The idea was to strike at India's economic growth and great power aspirations. A raid on the Infosys campus, visited by heads of states and corporate leaders, would underline the dangers of business in India and remind the world that for all its new-found success, it remained a nation of contradictions, and at heart, unstable.

Many people in the room were not convinced by the Pakistani choice.  It still seemed more like an academic exercise than anything rooted in military reality. But in the aftermath of the Mumbai attacks later that year, and in the light of renewed warnings this week by Israeli intelligence of another Mumbai-like attack coming in the next few weeks, it is clear that India's vulnerability appears to be in economic, rather than purely military, targets.

Indeed last year when tensions rose following the Mumbai attack and there was talk of an Indian military response, it was Pakistan's former chief of intelligence Hamid Gul who warned of  Pakistan hitting back where it would hurt the most.  India's so-called  Silicon Valley will go up in smoke, Gul is widely quoted to have told CNN, if the Indians sent troops  to the border.

{Photographs of the Mumbai skyline and Indian and Pakistani soldiers at Wagah]

Back in 2008, even before Barack Obama was elected, Washington pundits were urging him to adopt a new regional approach to Afghanistan and Pakistan involving Russia, India, China, Saudi Arabia and even Iran. The basic argument was that more troops alone would not solve the problems, and that the new U.S administration needed to subsume other foreign policy goals to the interests of winning a regional consensus on stabilising Afghanistan.

It would be simplistic to suggest that the Obama administration's decision to cancel plans to build a missile-shield in eastern Europe was motivated purely -- or even primarily -- by a need to seek Russian help in Afghanistan. But it certainly serves as a powerful reminder about how far that need to seek a "grand bargain" on Afghanistan may be reshaping and influencing policy decisions around the world.

"Securing Afghanistan and its region will require an international presence for many years, but only a regional diplomatic initiative that creates a consensus to place stabilizing Afghanistan ahead of other objectives could make a long-term international deployment possible," Barnett Rubin and Ahmed Rashid argued in their much-cited 2008 policy paper titled "From Great Game to Grand Bargain". (pdf document).

Many of those arguments reappeared in a more recent report by the Asia Society (pdf document) -- formerly chaired by U.S special envoy to Afghanistan Richard Holbrooke -- so they are worth studying closely.

The ideas were ambitious and far-reaching, from remapping relations between Russia and the United States, prodding India and Pakistan towards a peace deal on Kashmir, seeking help from Iran and drawing in China and Saudi Arabia.  Some of those ideas were blown off course by the financial crisis, by the row in Iran over its disputed election, and by last November's attack on Mumbai which undermined U.S. attempts to steer India and Pakistan towards a peace deal.

And recently, they had been almost completely drowned by the media focus on military tactics and the merits of sending more troops to Afghanistan. With the U.S. decision to cancel the missile shield, one of those ideas -- about seeking Russian help in Afghanistan -- may have finally managed to break above the surface again.

In the case of Russia, the question was always about what price the United States was willing to pay to win Moscow's help in Afghanistan, possibly through less ardent support for NATO aspirants Ukraine and Georgia and a review of the missile shield due to be set up in the Czech Republic and Poland.

Obama already moved to try to assuage fears in Moscow and elsewhere that the United States might be seeking a permanent military presence in Afghanistan, a long-standing concern in Russia wary of having U.S. troops in what it sees as its backyard. “Make no mistake: we do not want to keep our troops in Afghanistan. We seek no military bases there," Obama said in his speech in Cairo in June. 

But it has been unclear how much further he might be willing to compromise to win Russia's support for what has become widely known as "Obama's war" in Afghanistan.

As discussed in this post, the Moscow Times spelled out what it saw as the price of Russian cooperation in Afghanistan in an op-ed published before Obama's inauguration:

“Afghanistan may well define your foreign policy legacy the way Iraq defined Bush’s," it said. "You will need all the support you can muster, including from Iran. You will also need Russia’s support. Moscow understands that the stability of its southern flank will hugely depend on what happens on the Hindu Kush mountain range in eastern Afghanistan and northwestern Pakistan. But Moscow is torn between giving support to the West and preparing for the West’s withdrawal from Afghanistan. The latter would mean cutting deals with the Taliban locally and relying on China strategically. You can help Russia make the right choice.”

Of course, there are many other reasons for, and consequences of, the U.S. decision on the missile shield, as discussed here and here.

But if anyone wants a steer on the likely direction of U.S. foreign policy, and its implications globally, it's probably worth rereading Barnett Rubin's "grand bargain" proposal from last year. Diplomacy is the art of the possible, and nobody expects the recommendations to be followed to the letter. But with Obama a considerably more cerebral president than his predecessor, the old "Read my Lips" slogan probably needs to be replaced with a new one: "Read the pdf."

(You can also find regular updates on the progress in relations between India and Pakistan -- one of the key themes of that report -- on "Pakistan:Now or Never", most recently in this post)

(Reuters photos: Girl in Afghanistan; Holbrooke, Obama)

With so much noise around these days in the relationship between India and Pakistan it is hard to make out a clear trend.  Politicians and national media in both countries have reverted to trading accusations, whether it be about their nuclear arsenals, Pakistani action against Islamist militants blamed for last year's Mumbai attacks or alleged violations of a ceasefire on the Line of Control dividing Kashmir. Scan the headlines on a Google news search on India and Pakistan and you get the impression of a relationship fraught beyond repair.

Does that mean that attempts to find a way back into peace talks broken off after the Mumbai attacks are going nowhere? Not necessarily. In the past the background noise of angry rhetoric has usually obscured real progress behind the scenes, and this time around may be no exception.

MORE TALKS

The Hindu newspaper reported on Sept 1 that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh may meet either the president or prime minister of Pakistan on the sidelines of a Commonwealth summit in Trinidad in November. It said the Indian government was already working out what strategy to adopt to make any meeting meaningful, while also pushing Pakistan to take more action against Pakistan-based militant groups in order to prevent another Mumbai-style attack.

There is no confirmation of that Trinidad meeting, and nor is there likely to be for some time, but The Hindu in recent months has proved to be well informed about the prime minister's approach to Pakistan. Singh himself laid out his plans in a speech in parliament in July in which he promised a "step by step" approach to dialogue -- effectively meaning that India would talk to Pakistan while refusing for now to reopen a formal peace process broken off after the Mumbai attacks.

The two countries' foreign ministers are also expected to talk on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York this month, although it is unclear whether this would be preceded by a meeting of foreign secretaries in line with an agreement reached in July that the top diplomats of India and Pakistan should meet "as often as necessary".  The Hindu said the foreign secretaries would meet in New York; more recent newspaper reports have called this into question.

DISMANTLING JAMMU AND KASHMIR?

In the meantime, both countries are edging forward in their approach to the two parts of Jammu and Kashmir which they control. (After their first war in 1947/48 the former princely state was divided into the regions of Ladakh, Kashmir and Jammu which are held by India, and the regions of Gilgit and Baltistan along with an area known as Azad Kashmir which are held by Pakistan.)

According to Praveen Swami, a Kashmir expert at The Hindu, the Indian government has been holding secret talks over the summer with the main political separatist alliance in Kashmir, the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, to try to agree an approach to bring peace to the region. "Perhaps most important," he said, "Pakistan is being asked to endorse the talks."

Over on its side of the border, the Pakistan government has decided to grant limited autonomy to Gilgit and Baltistan. It had previously run the region  directly from Islamabad, much to the irritation of local people who felt they had been deprived of their political rights to the kind of self-rule given to Pakistani provinces. 

To digress briefly into history, the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir was created in the 19th century by Hindu Dogra rulers expanding outwards from their base in Jammu and comprising people of different linguistic, ethnic and religious groups.  Were it not for the tremendous importance given to Jammu and Kashmir by both India and Pakistan - both of which claim the state in full - it might have broken up naturally years ago.

The people of Gilgit and Baltistan never felt much loyalty to the former maharajah of Jammu and Kashmir and have long complained that they have been held hostage to the Kashmir dispute (you hear the same complaints from Ladakhis on the Indian side.)

So do the parallel moves on both India and Pakistan suggest both countries are taking small steps towards an eventual dismantling of the former princely state which would allow a settlement of the long-running Kashmir dispute? Not quite - Pakistan has been careful to say it is not giving full provincial status to Gilgit and Baltistan. There are also historical grounds for treating the region differently from other parts of Jammu and Kashmir, which date back to partition and before.

Yet given that anything to do with Jammu and Kashmir is potentially explosive, reactions to the Pakistan government's move on Gilgit and Baltistan have so far been relatively muted. Dawn newspaper said that the decision stuck a balance between meeting the aspirations of its people for political rights and maintaining the region's status as disputed territory. The Daily Times said that the people of Gilgit and Baltistan had been held hostage to the Kashmir dispute for long enough and should eventually be incorporated as a full province of Pakistan. On the Indian side, I've seen criticism from the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party but nothing from the government.

A roadmap for peace sketched out by Singh and former president Pervez Musharraf in 2007 effectively acknowledged the division of the state by accepting there would be no exchange of territory between the two countries - although both pledged to try to make borders irrelevant. That agreement was shelved when Musharraf's own political fortunes nosedived.  But are the governments of India and Pakistan nonetheless following some of the signposts in that roadmap despite all the angry rhetoric currently dominating their relationship? And if so, how far are they exchanging information about their plans?

WILD CARDS

Just in case the above looks too rosy a view on the prospects of progress in relations between India and Pakistan, it is probably worth remembering it can all go wrong, particularly if there is another major militant attack in India.

The other wild card comes from the transformation of the political landscape in India with the implosion of the opposition right-wing BJP initially triggered by the furore over a book on Pakistan's founder Mohammad Ali Jinnah by former senior BJP leader Jaswant Singh. So far the jury remains out on how the political drama will play out. Analysts variously predict a collapse of the right, or its opposite - a revival of the right as the BJP returns to its hardline anti-Pakistan Hindu nationalist roots in an attempt to reinvent itself after losing two consecutive general elections. Until the political landscape becomes clearer, India's Congress-led government is likely to tread cautiously.

(Reuters file photos: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in Siachen; Singh with Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari in Russia; Dal lake in Srinagar; Drass on the Line of Control; former Indian foreign minister Jaswant Singh)